Category: April Fools’ Day

This post is an April Fools joke. Rest assured, we have no intention of changing the MBID system that MusicBrainz currently uses.

But, like all good parody news items, there is an element of truth behind this post. The announcement of the Echo Nest API shutdown is real, and with this change you will no longer be able to use the Echo Nest IDs to look up information. This particularly hurts users of the Million Song Dataset, which maps each track to the Echo Nest ID. The new Spotify API isn’t even providing any compatibility api or ID mapping, leaving users to look up 1 million Spotify IDs in the remaining months that the the old Echo Nest api will remain available.

At MusicBrainz, we understand the importance of a stable identifier system. That’s why, 16 years ago, we picked these unwieldy-looking UUID identifiers – that have since proven to have stood the test of time, with room to continue growing. You can look up an MBID made 16 years ago, today – and it will still work another 16 years in the future.

Hello all,

Following Echo Nest’s bold announcement that Echo Nest ids are being replaced by Spotify IDs, we figured it was time to make our own ID change public as well – MBIDs were a fantastic idea 16 years ago, but let’s face it, they’re not the most beautiful thing around, so our MBIDs will now also be replaced by Spotify IDs to help with a proper mapping across tools. Anything without a Spotify mapping will simply get purged. This should greatly simplify the data we have and remove any doubt for some releases whether they exist or not – if they’re on Spotify, they clearly exist!

We would like to commend Echo Nest on their brave leadership in this, giving us the courage to move on from our ancient heritage and try new things. With the speed technologies evolve in this digital age, it can be hard to keep up with things and keep things fresh, but Echo Nest is showing the way forward, and we’re delighted to be able to follow so quickly in their path.